Friday, June 23, 2017

'Sleeping Beauty' - Why Is Such A Socially Retrograde A Ballet So Perennially Popular? Here's Why

"Isn't this the most royalist of all ballets? King Florestan XXIV and his queen have a daughter, you see, and the story hinges on her finding Prince Right. Dynastic succession is the name of the game. ... So why is this classic danced so regularly and well across America? Is royalism merely its surface?" The answer, says Alastair Macaulay, is this: "The fairy godmothers whom the monarchs invite to the heiress Aurora's christening in the Prologue take the drama into a new, larger dimension: pure classicism. They make this a ballet about ballet itself - ballet as a language of harmonious idealism."



Article source here:Arts Journal

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